


goosebumps

by mcjuggie



Category: Archie Comics, Archie Comics & Related Fandoms, Riverdale (TV 2017), Sabrina the Teenage Witch (TV)
Genre: Abuse, Cults, Dark, Established Relationship, F/F, F/M, Horror, M/M, Psychological Horror, Teen Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-19 20:52:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13131960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mcjuggie/pseuds/mcjuggie
Summary: Betty and Jughead are the first to see something spooky in the town of Riverdale, but what they see is just the start of the town's dark unravelling.A 80s horror inspired Bughead story.





	1. Chapter 1

Summertime in Riverdale.

Everyone knew the ads, the ones that ran right before the news and located on the sides of busses. Featuring laughing kids jumping into Sweetwater River at high noon, the sun blazing and every single one of them featuring a smile. The ads that highlighted hiking and eating at the charming local diner. Until the edit a few months ago they had a shot of people enjoying the now-defunct Twilight Drive-In, but the mayor had been wise enough to call for a new commercial in time for summer and reshoots had taken place while the water had still been freezing.

Now it featured the familiar faces of Riverdale’s youth; the bright eyed Josie and the wide-grinned Chuck. Characters in their drama last year, now nameless smiles advertising how great the summer in their little town was. Watching Cheryl Blossom drink a chocolate shake and smile wide into the camera every day while you were mindlessly trying to numb the outside world with TV was a little cruel.

Summertime meant no weekly Blue and Gold. It meant no school work. It meant a lot of spare time that had been previously filled with trying to solve the local murder mystery, but after that had dissolved away it had left Betty Cooper with nothing to do. It was amazing how much working as a detective trying to solve the Black Hood murders had taken up of her, and as the rain faded away into the light and the sun took over for the coming months, she had found herself so... bored.

Antsy. Irritated. Anxious.

Repeatedly she had told herself it was in her head, and tried to find normalcy. Normalcy like those parties, the ones in the middle of a field in the middle of nowhere thrown by someone you hated. In this case it was one Chuck Clayton who had driven his truck into the farmer’s fields with a couple of speakers ready in the bed. The text had gone out to everyone’s phones with coordinates, and thus the party would be taking place under the moon.

The night before, Betty Cooper had joined every other student in the traditional celebration for kids in small towns; a bonfire. Burning bright with the textbooks and papers of the year past, they had all danced and drank the usual fare of a few liquor bottles in paper bags and cans of coke. The fire was to cleanse away the school year, and she too had tossed away a few things into the fire, but something had distracted Betty that night,

Flipping through the channels, she did try her best to ignore the memory, as her focus drained on the fake drama of the reality show she’d been watching,

It nagged her; the eyes that she’d seen in the woods by the fire. It felt foolish, but every time Betty went back to that memory her blood would run impossibly cold. There had been so many people there that night, but Betty could have sworn she had seen something else,

  
Something much darker,

The deep, vacant eyes. Dead was not the word she could have used, as when she thought of them her mind would wander to terrible things, things that Betty couldn’t imagine that she had inside; it felt like the world had started to burn around her, the miserable way that staring into the eyes of this stranger. The destruction that she felt capable of terrified her, possessed with ideas she’d previously had thought impossible to her.

  
The impossible black holes in the midst of the forest, set in the middle of a face with an unreadable expression. The quiver of their lips was enough to make Betty’s knees with fear, the kind of pure anger that the muscle in their mouth managed to make,

“Archie?” The impossible red hair, but nothing else made sense and even equating the two had made Betty scared then.

It’s almost like she could remember laughter bursting out to make her lose focus, but her memory became fuzzy. The rest of the party seemed to happen as normal, and she woke up in her bed just as expected. Yet she couldn’t remember any conversations she’d had, or any faces of the people who had been there,

When she tried to remember, their faces became blurs, unreadable and featureless holes just as the eyes were. Focusing too long, and she could almost feel the same thing. Looking back to the same place where he had been, and he was gone,

It would have been a nightmare, but she had woken up with photos from the night before at the bonfire. Moments she couldn’t remember,

She felt stolen away, almost.

Betty Cooper didn’t believe in things like this, though. Investigation into things like town corruption was one thing, but falling into traps like being abducted by aliens were things that Alice Cooper had quantified as a waste of everyone’s time a very long time ago. Betty had vivid memories of Hal’s rants on anyone who wanted a _Haunted Riverdale_ section added to the paper; on how delusional these wackos were for thinking that there was any such thing as ghosts. Next thing you know, and they’ll be wanting a Witch Watch.

Hal had thought that was clever, Betty was sure; but it had killed whatever early interest she might have had with the paranormal or strange. Though the mysteries might have called to her, she did think it was beneath what she was capable of covering; Riverdale might have been a black pit, but it wasn’t _that_ kind of black pit.

Right?

* * *

 

If Jughead Jones was going to end up in a black pit, he was going to take some notes.

He was in the midst of trying to anyway, and it was starting to make him feel a little insane. Attempting to write down an event that most people were going to disagree on what it could have been; some people might have said aliens and some might have said ghosts. Hell, some people had been responding to forum posts with stories of the Mothman. Jughead couldn’t be sure, but he wasn’t going to just let Reddit decide alone. Whatever it was, it was strange,

Riverdale was home to the strange, and it was starting to influence the way his writing would take form. For one thing, Jughead had started to draw now; not having much of a hand for it, the crude explanations for the faceless versions of his friends had gone up on the wall of his father’s trailer immediately. Pasting them up with scotch tape to stare at the pieces of the night.

Just blurs; charcoal pencil pressed around the distinct long cherry hair, the definitive curls and cat ears. The sculpted coif of black hair. The missing faces of everyone... charcoal masses, the pencil scrawled back and forth to try and identify what he’d seen;

Verbally, and on paper, he would describe it was a ‘macabre smudging of the faces of my friends’ but he didn’t know if people would _get_ it really.

Not that he didn’t have those copies. Jughead had been journaling every version of the event that he could for days now; so far that had mostly meant asking Archie what happened. Of course what happened to Archie Andrews was that he had drank a little from a paper bag, danced with Veronica, and then went home to his bed and woke up none the wiser,

Reggie, same story.

The more people he texted, the more crazy he was starting to feel. The same placid answers that filled his heart with doubt and made Jughead unsure of himself, despite whatever convictions he was trying to gain.

Nobody saw it, but he couldn’t forget it. The eyes that _knew_ , every horrible thing he had ever thought. It knew and more, it felt like it could bloom things inside of his brain. Jughead had done things he wasn’t proud of in the name of those he loved, more than most would, but he felt anger boil over in his system. It pained him, ached in his heart and made his body feel like it was going to shut down.

The deep, black eyes, and that grin,

Jughead hadn’t stopped drawing because he had already written every version he could think of to try and describe what he’d seen. The horrific squint around the black holes that felt like they were sucking in the forest around it, and the mouth that when he tried to read the expression of, he could feel his jaw tighten. Muscles that suddenly felt like they could have burst,

That laugh that felt like lashes on his back, stoking a furious anger that rose in his throat like bile.

For once in his life, he wasn’t sure how to describe it using his words; nothing felt right. So he was labouring over the line of the mouth, trying to demonstrate the right curve that could simulate the same reaction, egging something on that he didn’t even know he had inside of him. It truly scared him.

Then the laugh. The one that rattled through the air like a stench, that lingered even as his memories started to intrude on each other. Everything else was just drinking, with the faceless versions of his closest friends that filled him with a sense of unease.

Except,

“Betty,” It had been the only face, so he hadn’t really needed to draw or describe it. Trying to remember her was never painful, not even in the midst of what felt like a bad drug trip; she was as beautiful that night as she always had been, and she too had seemingly been looking at the very same thing he had. The same black holes staring out at them,

They often saw what others couldn’t together, so it didn’t surprise Jughead to learn that this had been no exception.

But they had been forced apart for the rest of the party, and that much Jughead was sure of. None of the people he tries to remember even resemble her, nothing close to the halo of blonde hair that he wants to see. The only moment connected to being lucid is with her, and he can’t find any other moments with her in it. It’s the only part of his memories from that night that doesn’t cause his body to start to react and go into that same state of shock and anger.

Betty is like an anchor, but he can’t find her nearly enough. A truth that could apply to so much of Jughead’s life when he tries to meditate on it.

Yet he stared at his phone, eyeing the crack in the corner instead of the call button and leaving her contact open but unused. It felt like he was dragging her into yet another thing.  

Something else she could do without, a thought bitter as he palmed over the leather of his jacket. Tossing his phone and himself into bed, his nightmares are horrific and he wakes up in a sweat more than once.

He wonders if hers are the same, instead of asking.


	2. Chapter 2

In the daytime, the field feels endless. It spans out, and out, until it meets the horizon. The sun blaring above her, it’s then that she can recognize that she’s truly alone more so than in the comforting cocoon of nightime. It cloaked how vulnerable they were that night, just a bunch of teens dancing around a fire in the middle of it. The circle is still burned into the ground, though the rest of the party is long gone. 

It had once been farmer’s field, but nearly everything this close to Riverdale was due to be redeveloped at some point or another. Perhaps not then, but they had planned for the next generation to expand to this land one day. The same cookie cutter homes that lines Riverdale’s streets would one day expand over the woods.

One day, it could have been a golf course. Now it seemed to sole exist for the purpose of kids to get drunk in. 

Betty wasn’t sure what she would find going back. Secretly she had hoped she might see the man there again hidden in the bushes, but she had known that was naive. Instead, the silence deafened her and the loneliness ached as she searched around in the tall grass by herself. 

There was nothing around the circle of ash but beer bottles and garbage that Betty slowly collected to be taken back to town with her. Evidence of the party that she barely believed she actually went to, having not more than a second or two of memory of the event.

Trudging over the hill, through towards the woods that she had reimagined so many times in the past hours. The sight had caused a chill down her spine, the discomfort spreading the closer she got to the spot where she had known it had been. 

Her eyes burned, and she blinked back tears as she stepped closer, and closer,

“Betty,” It was enough to make her stop in her tracks as the warmth that flooded in place of what had once been the chill so deep it threatened to take root inside of her. Turning around to see Jughead, her shoulders eased down as her body turned away from the woods.

“Jug, what are you doing here?” she couldn’t help but ask, although Betty might have been able to assume the truth, Betty truly couldn’t help but yearn to actually hear it in his words. Some confirmation that she wasn’t crazy. 

“To see if that thing is still here, right?” Jughead knew two things; that Betty was worrying about the existence of anything strange at all, and that Betty was the only other person in Riverdale that he could freely talk to. As if this was anything new. 

Reaching for her hand, naturally, as he lead her up closer to where it had once been. 

“It’s all I can remember,” Betty replied, squeezing his palm in her hand as they walked closer together. It’s enough to ebb away the anxiety that had threatened to overtake her before, so they can walk close enough to the spot where it had once been.

There, the spot is rotted; the woods have died down to a brown colour, and the bugs have infested where the plants had once been. Their free hands would quickly move to cover their mouths and noses, coughing and hacking as a foul smell filled the air from the spot. The scent brings flashes of horror, of death and dying that neither teen had ever seen outside of a half-baked horror movie. The visions were far more than that, enough to make a person’s mind wander and time begin to flow as the details of men’s flesh being eaten away by the bugs in the ground. The burning of flesh on a summer’s day in a field

Flannel pulled from his shoulder to his mouth, Jughead squints and begins to pull Betty in towards him as he coughs it away. “Hey--” It’s all over her face, as the blood runs from her features and Betty pales and her eyes roll back. “Betty!” 

“Betty!” Jughead can only smooth a hand over her features, thumbing softly across her cheek. “Hey, hey, c’mon, please B,” is all he can do to beg, slapping softly to the alarmingly cool touch of her skin. 

“Betty--” he’s stopped from a pure diatribe of her name, as he looks over her shoulder. There it is, standing in the spot the fire once was; the sight enough to still him then. The black eyes in daylight twist Jughead’s stomach horribly, but he straightens and forces himself to look away. 

“We have to go. I don’t think I can carry you that far, so please, please, wake up.” he pleaded with her, looking into her eyes. Pressing a few fervent, desperate kisses to her lips as he held her features with one hand and her waist to keep her standing with the other. Feeling the movement of her hands around his body to keep herself standing, and the matching movement of her lips against his own? 

It was nothing short of a fucking miracle, making a kind of grin break out on his face. 

“Jug--” 

“No, no,” he blurted out. “No time.” While he would have loved to have the pleasure of staring into her intricate blue eyes for an eternity, Jughead’s attention was on the hollowed out man taking steps towards them. Each step felt like a painful twinge in his shoulder the more still they continued to fucking be. 

They were the prey, and this thing was a predator. 

“We gotta’ fucking go.” he urged, eyes glancing backwards and it was just steps away. The arm was reaching out, and Jughead’s breath exhaled before they finally took off running through the field. Narrowly missing it’s touch, but even their sprint was far faster than it seemed capable of moving. 

As it’s limbs moved, the golden-green grass died in its wake. Ambling across the field slowly. Jughead and Betty tore across the field in a horrified run, their hands linked tight. 

They wouldn’t stop running even as their limbs ached and the weeds had torn at their ankles. Even as their lungs burned up under the pressure and their hearts raced impossibly, they kept running together. The fields blended with the woods, which gave way to the idyllic paths of Riverdale’s more isolated homes. Slowly, it melted away to the hum of traffic that was Pop’s; where people weren’t locked away behind doors but rather freely walking in and out of the shop.

“Their faces...” Betty pointed, and Jughead could see it too; the same unrecognizable masks that covered the faces of his classmates and peers. Nothing but a halo of hair, the rest unseeable to him, 

and his girlfriend, lacing their fingers together Jughead looked back to her. “He’s coming. We should get inside.” It was dark, but their situation was looking increasingly bleak. 

“We have to warn them. We have to warn everyone,” Before Jughead could explain against this and all the possible ways that he had long since learned people will call you a weirdo, a freak and otherwise a liar, Betty was slipping past his grip into the doors of Pop’s.

Sighing deep, he followed after her.


	3. Chapter 3

The door rings above them, and Betty blinks as they enter the door and suddenly everyone’s face comes into view. Clarity restored in a sudden wave, as the fear and terror washed away all at once. Pop’s neon lights blared into Betty’s eyes, and then she’s faced with Veronica and Archie. 

Picturesque together with Veronica’s ankle on the inside of Archie’s thigh while Veronica leans over to whisper a secret into his ear. Something intimate, meant to make the redheaded boy blush and blush hard because by the time Betty and Jughead have crossed the restaurant, Betty is sure the majority of the blood in his body has rushed to his face. 

And probably one other place. 

Veronica rolls her head over her shoulder to look at them both, but then is stunned at the bruised and battered appearance of them both. “Jesus B, you couldn’t think of a better outfit to go running in the woods in?” she gaped at her friend’s naked legs, and the stained, once pale lace of her now-ruined shorts. 

“Are you two okay? You look like someone’s been chasing you,” Archie’s shoulders squared, as he’d seen this before and reacted much the same. Immediately he was spiraling into thoughts of serial killers out for blood again. 

But Betty shook her head. “No, we’re not okay.” she slumped down into the booth next to Veronica; her head felt like it was barely able to focus, still trying to discern what constituted reality for them all any longer. As Josie, just moments ago unrecognizable to her, walked by to a nearby booth with her usual calm expression, Betty slumped further and felt a hand to her brow. 

“Something is after us,” Betty began to explain. “Didn’t you two see it at the bonfire? In the woods.” 

“The bonfire? Like, Chuck’s bonfire?” Archie was clearly confused. brows knitted in a traditional expression. 

“It looks just like you.” Betty was exasperated that nobody seemed to believe them, just as she had feared. “Archie, I’m not making this up...” 

“I saw it too.” Jughead interjected lowly, sitting with his head down; chin perched on his knuckles with a fry between his lips and eyeline stuck on his girlfriend for now. 

“That doesn’t exactly spur my confidence.” Veronica muttered under her breath, brows raising. Still, she was trying her best to have friends, and supporting Betty Cooper through what was clearly a mental breakdown certainly fell under that realm. 

“V, I think this thing is dangerous.” Betty warned, her voice so earnest it seeped into the hearts of each person at the table differently. Minutes passed, and everyone was silent still after she had said it. Until finally Archie cleared his throat,

“Maybe it would be a good idea if we both talked this through,” Archie started diplomatically. 

“Right,” Veronica interjeted. “Girls Night, Guys Night. I’ll take Betty to get her mind off... whatever this is,” Veronica skeptically eyed them both, still unsure that they hadn’t taken some bad dose of drugs that Jughead had dragged back from the South Side. Frankly, she had her fair share of hallucinations at parties and they had seemed terrifying at the time, sobering up could soothe it away more times than not.

Acid made all kinds of things seem real. 

“And Archie and Jughead can go have their thing at the Andrews’.” she finished, smiling at them both and receiving only weak expressions.

“No, I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Jughead was already reaching across the table, his hands tangling with Betty’s to physically connect with her. It had felt as if they had risked their lives that day, and could have been less lucky. So he was clinging to her with an intensity, not knowing if he really trusted the idea of being so physically far away from her as that. His voice was strained by the time his next question came, “Betty, can I talk to you?” 

Veronica wrapped an arm around Betty’s shoulders before she could run away. “It might be for the best, you know a little downtime.” Veronica wanted to talk Betty down from whatever ledge she was on, whatever place that Veronica thought that Jughead had talked her into. This talk of monsters lurking in the bushes at their parties? It gave Veronica the creeps, and so she wanted to get her best friend far away from the topic. 

It couldn’t be real. “Maybe a spa, B. You could use a little tender, love, and care. If not soap and water.” she pointed out, as Betty could only look between the people at the table. Largely they were trying to read Jughead as she was kept from their private conversation. 

“I miss you. Archiekins doesn’t mind.” Veronica glanced over. “Jughead could probably use a guy’s night,” 

“Actually--”

“It’s settled. I’m going to go order you some food to go.” Veronica popped out of the booth, shuffling Betty out and going to the counter with her purse and a order. 

It gave Betty and Jughead a single private moment, as Betty stood up and touched the back of his hand. If Archie wouldn’t believe them then Betty wasn’t going to include him on their conversations. Not yet, when a part of Betty was still screaming in alarm on what was happening out there. The lingering fear that it was approaching them, slowly descending.

What was even worse? “It feels like this might just be the start.” Jughead admitted aloud, having been holding back on his darkly prophetic statements until he needed to. When he’d listened to their two best friend shrug them off despite a real danger seemingly so close, it felt necessary to try and scare some sense into the one person he felt he could still put his trust in. Not wanting to be apart wasn’t just based on the fact that it was how teenagers died in movies, not entirely. 

“What if it gets worse and we’re on opposites sides of Riverdale? How am I supposed to--” he cut himself off from sounding cliche, though holding his tongue took some visible patience as he looked away. 

“Protect me?” Betty was patient, her eyes soft still as her hand reached to touch his cheek.

“No, how am I supposed to do anything without you there with me?” It had proven to be one of the driving factors in getting to stay sane. Knowing that there was something crawling through the dark corners of Riverdale that seemed to have some sort of control, and that his connection with Betty was the sole thing that had kept them from it,

It was making Jughead serious about not wanting to split up for a guys night he never asked for. 

“Veronica doesn’t live that far from Archie’s place, and we’ll keep our phones on loud,” Betty listed off the practical things they could do first, and then immediately had to read the frustration in Jughead’s brow. “I just don’t think Veronica’s going to let it go, Jug. I don’t like it either but... you can come pick me up later?”

It was only Betty being diplomatic, as the idea of having to be apart was exactly what she had been avoiding since summer started, since FP had been arrested the last fall, since they’d started dating in the first place. The unease was on her face, as was the dirt and grime of having run through the woods all the way back to Riverdale. 

Jughead wanted to clean Betty up and ensure that she was going to be okay, not Veronica. Still he sighed, and slid a hand through her hair as he rest his forehead against hers. Staying there a moment, so they could both relish some silence, safety, and closeness.

“I’m picking you up.” he said finally, as he pulled away only to meet her eyes again. Relenting was only for her, because he didn’t want to keep fighting Betty and picking at what had to be her very last nerve keeping her composed. Sliding her hair behind her ear, he moved his hands back to her waist.“After I listen to my best friend tell me I’m crazy for a few hours.” 

“Try and convince him?” Betty urged, her smile hopeful as much as her eyes were still tired. “Please, we need people to believe us.” 

“Betty, in my experience, it doesn’t matter who believes you.” Jughead pointed out, and then Veronica was teetering over with an excessive amount of take-out, eyebrows raising as a cue for them all to leave. 

“Be safe.” Betty said as a good-bye, squeezing Jughead’s hand once more before following after Veronica, leaving Archie with two bags of burgers and a complacent grin. 

“So uh, what did you see in the forest man?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the halfway point of the first part of who knows how much! please let me know what you think and I'll muster up some more chapters.

**Author's Note:**

> a hoy hoy, this is my first ever fanfiction and i'm seeing if i like the whole thing, so any feedback is totally warranted. if ya' like what you read, let me know if i should continue. 
> 
> i'll take all kinds of wild liberties with the show, because i'm an old fan of the comics and think some things should change. :P


End file.
